Shouldn’t Elon Musk have quit by now?

It’s over 36 hours since people overwhelmingly voted that Elon Musk resign as CEO of Twitter (out of about 17 million votes, 57.5% were in favor of Musk’s resignation). But instead of immediately and publicly accepting the results, which he said he would, Musk is now questioning the validity of his poll after Musk himself launched it on Twitter, a platform he owns.

It’s not just anonymous Twitter users who may want Musk to step down. So are outside investors calling Musk focus less on Twitter and more on Tesla. They see the Twitter drama as a distraction from Musk from his more lucrative business with Tesla, which has seen his the stock price falls precipitously in the last weeks. Musk has long said he wants to finally step down as Twitter CEO, so it’s unclear why he seems so reluctant to accept the poll results calling on him to end his chaotic reign as head of the company. .

The recent poll debacle demonstrates Musk’s self-destructive attachment to running Twitter, despite having jeopardized his reputation and business success since taking over in October. It’s also another example of how Musk can’t seem to handle the criticism – from discussing the percentage of people in the crowd who were booing him at a comedy show to fire employees who criticized him, and now, dismissing the legitimacy of Twitter users who voted him out of the company he just bought.

Rather than directly commenting on the poll results, Musk took to Twitter on Monday morning and encouraged questions about the legitimacy of the findings. He engaged in a Twitter thread by a user who suggested that an army of “deep state” bots was rigging the poll against him. Musk responded to another user in the same thread who suggested that only paid Twitter Blue subscribers should be able to vote in polls: he said: “Twitter will make this change.”

Polls have been a favorite tactic in Musk’s erratic leadership style for making big decisions on Twitter. When he asked users if Twitter should do it restore former US president Donald Trump’s accountFor example, Musk was quick to accept results that were strictly in favor of Trump’s return. Hours after the poll closed, Musk he tweeted that “people spoke” and reinstated Trump’s account.

This time, though, Musk is dragging his feet. Tuesday, Musk replied to a tweet by market research firm HarrisX, which conducted its own survey and found that 61% of people wanted Musk to stay.

Interesting. You suggest that maybe we still have a tiny problem with bots on Twitter…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2022

Musk has been complaining about Twitter bots since before buying the platform. At the time, he tried to use the platform bot issue as an excuse to get out of the deal. But since he took over, Musk said he’s cleared Twitter of excessive bots. It’s confusing, then, that he would have conducted a Twitter poll on the fate of his own leadership if he didn’t have complete confidence in its validity.

But then again, it was always part of Musk’s plan to eventually find a replacement CEO for Twitter. In November, he told a Delaware court“I expect to reduce my time on Twitter and find someone else to manage Twitter over time.”

Part of what seems to be holding Musk back, however, is that he doesn’t see a good replacement.

“Nobody wants the job that can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor” Musk tweeted on Sunday. Then, on Tuesday, she responded with laughing emojis to recent NBC history reporting that it is actively seeking a new CEO.

So now Musk has created an artificial deadline for him to do something he already wanted to do, but clearly Musk isn’t ready yet.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is questioning the validity of a poll he conducted after people overwhelmingly voted for him to step down from his role at the company. Carina Johansen/NTB/AFP via Getty Images